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exfluncticate
Oct. 14th, 2010 07:32 am![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
prettygoodword.livejournal.comexfluncticate (eks-FLUNK-ti-kayt) - v., to utterly destroy.
If this one has you scratching your head, wondering what in all heck Latin word this came from, there's a reason -- there isn't one. This is another entry in the long tradition of colorful 19th century American coinages, most of them intended to look Latinate -- like absquatulate and rambunctious. As a time and place for linguistic coinages, the North American frontier was as fertile as Elizabethan England, with the way being led by journalists trying to spice up their newspapers and so draw an audience. This seems to have been coined in the Chemung (New York) Democrat in 30 November 1839, and quickly spread. It was still in vigorous use during the Civil War (1860s) and H.L. Menken in 1921 cites it as a formerly popular word.
As for Jackson's rebels, we intend to exfluncticate them.
---L.
If this one has you scratching your head, wondering what in all heck Latin word this came from, there's a reason -- there isn't one. This is another entry in the long tradition of colorful 19th century American coinages, most of them intended to look Latinate -- like absquatulate and rambunctious. As a time and place for linguistic coinages, the North American frontier was as fertile as Elizabethan England, with the way being led by journalists trying to spice up their newspapers and so draw an audience. This seems to have been coined in the Chemung (New York) Democrat in 30 November 1839, and quickly spread. It was still in vigorous use during the Civil War (1860s) and H.L. Menken in 1921 cites it as a formerly popular word.
As for Jackson's rebels, we intend to exfluncticate them.
---L.
